Full reproductive freedom – including access to abortion and contraception – is central to women’s health, economic security, freedom from violence, and equality under the law.
Roe v. Wade affirmed access to safe and legal abortion as a constitutional right in 1973, but federal and state legislators undermined it for decades until the Supreme Court overturned the decision on June 24, 2022.
Even before this reversal, states enacted more than 1,200 restrictions on reproductive health care – almost 500 of which passed after 2010 – to regulate abortion to the point of inaccessibility and strip pregnant people of reproductive agency. Anti-choice members of Congress have thwarted pro-choice legislation and held the line on defending the racist and discriminatory Hyde Amendment, which bans Medicaid coverage of abortion for low income people. Furthermore, the undeniably more conservative composition of the Supreme Court has emboldened anti-choice lawmakers and activists to take direct aim at reproductive and contraceptive equity legal protections.
Anti-choice politicians have chipped away at reproductive health from every angle – pushing abstinence-only sex education, gutting birth control coverage, restricting abortion access, slashing Title X family planning funding, imposing gag rules on health providers, propagating anti-choice disinformation, and weaponizing religious liberty to block health care delivery. This ongoing public health crisis disproportionately harms women of color, low-income people, immigrants, and transgender and non-binary people. Reproductive justice requires full civil and human rights; physical safety and bodily autonomy; and access to a safe and sustainable community in which to parent. However, systemic racism, discrimination in health care, economic injustice, police brutality, and sexual violence perpetuate social oppression and infringe on marginalized peoples’ ability to make decisions about their lives, bodies, sexuality, and reproduction.
Therefore, we must put a stop to dehumanizing and dangerous restrictions on reproductive health care, safeguard the constitutional right to reproductive autonomy in federal and state law, and ensure the affordability and accessibility of abortion and birth control. We also must work to dismantle systems of misogyny, discrimination, and economic inequality to achieve true reproductive freedom.
